Part of Me (Jessa & Paxton #1) Read online

  He groans again and turns on his side. His arms wrap around me and he turns me into his chest, his fingers clinging to my hair. I let out a breath of relief.

  I listen to his heart beating and take in his scent and it breaks my heart all over again. He’s leaving.

  He lays there with me in silence. His breathing sounds strained. His heart is beating so fast. Eventually he takes his hand out of my hair and unwraps me. I force myself to let him go and I look up into his eyes. They look dejected and I have to bite my lip to stop it from trembling. Paxton gives me a sad smile and runs his finger over my face. I have to close my eyes so I don’t fall apart. “I’m going to miss you, beso,” he whispers. It feels like every organ in my body is being squeezed. The pressure from my sadness that wants to cry out hurts. “Hey,” he whispers, “look at me.” I force my eyes open and the moisture escapes down my cheeks. He dries them with his thumb, leaving both of his hands wrapped around my face. “It’s going to be okay,” he tells me. I manage to nod at him, but I know that I will never be okay.

  I can’t ask him to stay for me. I won’t do that to him. But I want him to know that in the end I wasn’t scared and that I do love him. I take a deep breath and try to calm my insides. “I love you, Paxton. When you told me how you felt about me I should have realized how amazing it was that you were willing to give me all of you. But I knew that I felt exactly how you did. I knew how much I loved you and how much I needed you and I was terrified. I’m sorry if I hurt you. I’m sorry if I ruined what we could have had. This hurts, Pax, but I know that it was worth it to have been loved by you. And I need you to know that I fell in love with you too. That you were never just the guy I was having sex with. So thank you, for loving me, and thank you for helping me understand that it’s okay to feel. That it’s okay to want to be loved. Thank you for being my first love, I never would have known what it feels like without you.”

  Paxton’s face is tense but his eyes are soft. “I’m sorry things had to end like this, beso.” He lowers his lips to mine and kisses me. It’s soft and it’s sad and it’s perfect and it hurts so fucking bad. My hands cling onto the back of his head and when he takes his lips from mine, I don’t want to let go, but I do. He wipes my fresh tears away, then sits up with his arm around me. “I gotta go, beso,” he tells me.

  I stand on shaky legs and pull his sweatshirt off to give it back to him.

  “Keep that, kid,” he tells me.

  I hand it over to him. “I don’t want to.”

  He nods and takes it off my hands.

  When we walk out of the living room, Paxton sees the disaster he created in the kitchen. “Shit,” he mutters, running his hands through his hair.

  “I’ll help you clean it up,” I tell him, trying to hold onto any extra seconds I have before he leaves me.

  “I lost it last night. I’m sorry you had to see that,” he tells me, going to retrieve our shoes.

  “I would have lost it too,” I tell him, putting my shoes on and going to the kitchen to find a trash bag. Paxton joins me and we start throwing the large pieces of glass into the bag.

  I feel terrible, but this reminds me of that morning that he and I had to clean up the lamp – which was another awful morning, but I think of that girl and I can’t help but laugh. I look up at Paxton who’s staring at me with confusion. “I’m sorry. This is the least laughable moment of my life, but I just had a flashback of Sadie.”

  Paxton scrunches up his face like he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

  “Sadie? The girl you drove to insanity, causing her to break Vi’s lamp. Which I had to clean up… with you?”

  Paxton gives me an amused grin. “That girl… I swear to God, the things I was willing to do for you.”

  “For me?” I stutter, offended.

  “You think I hung out with that girl all night, brought her home and let her sleep in our room, for me?”

  “Umm…yeah,” I tell him, feeling dumbstruck. Who else would it be for?

  “No, kid,” he mutters. “That was all a show for you.”

  A laugh of disbelief escapes my throat. “Thank you, Pax, for bringing a girl home and having sex with her in our room. That was a very generous thing of you to do, for me.”

  “I didn’t have sex with her, kid,” he says. “I didn’t even touch her.”

  “What?” I ask, confused. “But I heard her, and you told us…are you serious? What the hell was she moaning and screaming for if you didn’t even touch her.”

  Paxton shakes his head, smiling. “Jesus, you don’t want to know. That girl was more desperate to get off then you at your worst.”

  “Wow, that’s really bad,” I tell him laughing, thinking about how hard up I was when Paxton came back to Chicago.

  Paxton is laughing, but then his face goes blank before it hardens. “I got this, Jessa. Go wait for me by the door.”

  I stare back at him wondering what just happened. I was just fucking with him, like I always do. That’s what Pax and I do, it’s who we are. I stare back at his dead eyes and take a deep breath, letting reality sink in. This is us. It’s not two sad people saying goodbye. This is us, who we have always been, and this part of us is over too. I feel a piece of glass, that I didn’t realize I was clenching, breaking into the palm of my hand. “Shit,” I mutter, dropping the glass and turning my palm up to look at the bleeding wound.

  “What the hell did you do, kid?” Paxton says, standing and going to the sink.

  I stand too and run my hand under the water, watching the blood become deluded. Paxton grabs a hold of my palm and holds it up to his face. “Jesus, beso,” he mutters, returning my hand to the water and leaving the kitchen.

  He comes back with a towel and a giant bandage. He pulls my hand out of the water and pats it dry, “This must hurt like a bitch,” he tells me.

  It doesn’t hurt at all actually. I can’t even feel it. “It doesn’t,” I tell him.

  His eyes flash to mine, questioning me, before he returns his focus to my hand. He opens the giant bandage and tries to wrap it around my hand, “Couldn’t you have found me something a little bigger? I don’t think that one’s gonna cover it,” I mutter.

  “Why is your hand so damn small?” he asks, struggling to find an angle where it will cover only my palm. I can’t help but smile at his frustration. I’m going to miss him so much.

  “I have a perfectly normal sized hand,” I tell him.

  “For a two year old,” he tells me, finally getting it secured on my hand.

  I hold it up in front of my face and I can’t help but smirk at the ridiculous site. “It’s perfect. Thanks, Pax.”

  He’s trying not to, but he smiles too.

  His phone sounds with the tone dedicated to his dad. Paxton’s face becomes tense as he pulls it out of his back pocket. He shakes his head and then answers it. “Don’t even fucking tell me,” is how he greets his father. “Shit, that bitch. She’s fucking fast.” I can hear his dad yelling on the other end of the phone. “I ran into Julia last night,” he says in response to whatever his father is yelling and I know right then what has happened. Paxton’s mom has cut him and his dad off. “I can’t do anything about it Gabriel…. I don’t know, I’ll figure it out…. Hell no, I’m not going anywhere near that bitch… are you fucking kidding me?.... shit, yeah, yeah, yeah…. I don’t know, I guess I’m gonna have to now…. Hell no, Gabriel, I’m not begging that bitch for nothing… no, I know. It was stupid. I’ll handle it…. Yeah, I’ll talk to you later.” Paxton grabs tight onto his phone and starts yelling a long string of obscenities directed at his mother. I lean against the counter and wait it out, prepared to bolt if he grabs a hold of anything breakable. His tangent slows down and he turns to me with murder in his eyes. He grabs a hold of my face and says, “Fucking women, what the hell is wrong with you guys?”

  I can’t help but see the irony in that statement. That’s exactly how I feel about men. I stare into his raging eyes until he removes his hands from m
y face and pushes them through his hair. “She closed the account?”

  “Of course she did,” he says, propping himself up against the adjacent counter.

  “What are you going to do about it?” I ask him.

  “There’s nothing I can do about it. The money’s gone. It’s a done deal. When I get home I gotta find a way to pay his bills.”

  Those words feel like cement. He has no choice now but to go home. “He wants you to go talk to her?”

  “I have to go talk to her,” he says, running his hands over his eyes. “A man showed up on Gabriel’s steps this morning to collect the beamer.”

  “Which you sold?” I guess. He always hated that thing and when he came back to Chicago he was no longer driving it.

  “Yeah, I did. And I used the money to buy Gabriel his dream car which he smashed into a cement wall the night of Billy’s party. Fucking totaled it.”

  “Oh my god.” That was the call he got, that he dismissed, that he pretended to forget about in order to finish what he started with me. “Why didn’t you tell me that? Is he okay?”

  “He’s fine but without that car I don’t have the cash to replace Dr. Dixon’s vehicle and Rachel’s not gonna let that shit slide. Her lawyers are going to be all over my ass before the day’s done. Fuck.”

  “So you’re going to go talk to her?” I ask, my limbs trembling at the thought of Paxton going anywhere near his stepsister.

  “I don’t have a choice.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  Paxton turns his eyes to me. “No, you’re not.”

  “Yes, I am. I’m not letting you go near that bitch stepsister of yours alone.”

  “You gonna be my bodyguard?”

  “If it’s necessary – yes. I would love to punch that girl in her face.”

  “Thanks, kid, but I can handle it,” he says, pushing away from the counter.

  “Paxton, don’t be stubborn. In case you didn’t understand me earlier, I am in love with you, you are leaving me and it’s breaking my fucking heart, so do me a favor and let me ride with you. I’ll stay in the car.”

  He shakes his head at me and gets in my face. “In case you didn’t understand, I offered myself to you and you weren’t interested. I’m sorry that your heart is breaking, but you have fucking destroyed me and I’m not interested in prolonging the pain.”

  My intake of air is audible as Paxton’s pain creeps into my heart. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me, I literally haven’t cried for years… and now it seems like it’s all I can do. I wipe them away from my face because I know, this time, he’s not going to do it for me.

  “Damn it, kid,” he mutters. “Fine... that’s fucking great.” He tells me before storming out of the kitchen.

  Chapter 23 - Paxton

  This morning has been total chaos. I’ve never felt so much pain and anger in my entire life as I felt before ten A.M. this morning. The main cause of my pain is sitting next to me in my car. I’m doing my best to ignore her, but that ain’t really possible.

  When I woke with my hand in her hair and hers up my shirt, fingers running over my skin, it was amazing. For about a tenth of a second before reality came crashing down on my groggy brain. She was back in my arms, but I had already made my decision and after Julia came stepping back into my life, I knew it was the right one. I knew I had to get Jessa out of my space ASAP. When she told me that she loved me, that I was her first love and she now knew that it was okay to let herself have that, I couldn’t stop the spark of hope that lit inside of me. But it’s too late for all that shit, I know that.

  I dug down deep and gathered all my bitterness and common sense and told her I was leaving. Which I was. Which I will be doing. But every second I spend near her is making that fact harder to accept. The half hour I had in that apartment with her made it crystal fucking clear that she’s my girl. She will always be my girl. It’s all a damn shame. And then she broke out the water works, which I’m accepting is my Achilles heel, and now she’s still here, in my space, about to walk into my very own, made especially for me, hell.

  I should be thinking about how I’m going to salvage this situation for Gabriel, and not about Jessa, but clearly, I’m not right in the head.

  The streets turn ideal and the houses turn gigantic and my stomach turns with nausea. It was one thing to come back to Chicago, but coming back to Glencoe… I never thought I would have to be here again. I pull up the long, brick driveway and my knuckles turn white.

  “This is where you grew up?” Jessa asks, peering out the front window at the mansion laid out in front of us.

  “Home sweet home,” I tell her bitterly. I throw the car into park and open my door. Jessa does the same and I don’t even bother telling her to stay put. My mind is now focused and I can’t worry about if Jessa is on my tail or not.

  I get to the front door and ring the bell. Jessa is shifting on her feet beside me, but I’m back in Dixon mode – shut down completely.

  The door opens and Jackson is standing in front of me. He gives me a look of disgust before yelling, “Mom, door’s for you,” and walking away.

  Jessa has made her way to my arm now, clinging to me with fear – which is completely warranted… this is a scary place to be. I step into the house and close the door behind us.

  “Coming, sweetheart,” Rachel calls to Jackson, before appearing in the foyer. She sees me and a wicked grin passes over her face. Her gaze turns to Jessa and she looks her up and down, making no effort to mask her judgment. “Please don’t tell me this is what you put your allowance on the line for.”

  I feel Jessa flinch at Rachel’s insult and I wrap my hand around her waist, needing to keep her close to me. “Don’t talk about her,” I tell Rachel, taking a step closer to her.

  “I’m assuming you came here to grovel. You might want to lose the attitude.”

  I hear Jessa’s huff of breath and I try to ignore it. No one in Chicago knows about this past and it’s uncomfortable having Jessa here to witness it. “Listen, Rachel, I don’t want your money, I don’t want anything from you and you don’t want anything from me, so I need you to let it go so that we can get out of each other’s lives for good this time.”

  She stares at me for a moment, her sadistic mind spinning its wheels. “We were just about to sit down for lunch. Why don’t you and your friend join us?”

  “No thanks,” I tell her. The dining room was never somewhere I was allowed to eat and if she’s inviting me in there now, it’s not for a meal.

  “If you want to protect your worthless father, then you will come to the dining room so we can talk about what needs to happen next,” she tells me, her expression becoming down right evil.

  Jessa moves her hand to mine, which is still holding onto her waist, and digs her nails in, taking a step toward Rachel. She’s pissed and ready for a fight. She has no idea what she’s walking into, but I go with her.

  Rachel leads us to the formal dining room and tells us where to sit. Jessa’s hand is now clamped tightly to my thigh under the table.

  Manuel, Rachel’s chef, comes through the door. His face lights up when he sees me but turns stern again as he looks at Rachel. “Tell the kids it’s time for lunch,” she snaps at him. He nods and finishes setting down the glasses of water before leaving the room.

  “Introduce me to your friend, Paxton,” Rachel says, her voice dripping with sweetness.

  “I’m Jessa,” she says. “I met Paxton in River Bluff- the town you grew up in? I know your brother pretty well. He’s got all kinds of great stories about you,” she says, cheerily, throwing a sweet laugh in for effect. “I’m glad to finally meet the infamous Rachel Reil in the flesh.”

  I’ve never said jack shit to Jessa about my mom, but obviously she does know my uncle, not that he ever said a whole hell of a lot about Rachel, but Jessa knows exactly what she’s doing, I realize, as I watch my mom’s neck become flushed. “I thought you looked a little backwoods bred,” she says to Jessa.
“I always knew Paxton would be more comfortable in that blue-collar world. He never fit in here.”

  “Well, I don’t know if I would say he fit in in River Bluff, I mean, we were all a little in awe when he showed up. We’ve never had anyone from California even visit, much less come there to live. I mean, you obviously know,” Jessa says, playing dumb, laying it on thick for effect. She’s getting to Rachel – her lips are pursed tightly together. “But, yeah, I can’t really see him fitting in here either–it seems pretty sheltered in this town. And I met your stepdaughter - she was like a fish out of water in the city. I can’t imagine Paxton living in a place like this. In Chicago everyone knows who he is – he’s like a celebrity. You must be so proud of him. Sorry that was silly - obviously you’re proud of him, I mean, you’re his mother. You obviously know how special he is. I can just imagine how you brag to your suburbanite friends about what a huge success Paxton became in the big city of Chicago.” Again, a total fucking stretch and Jessa is talking out of her ass, but apparently she’s gleamed an understanding of how things in that city used to be for me. Rachel doesn’t even know I play the guitar, she sure as shit doesn’t know anything about Polly or the success we had.

  “You seem completely in awe of him,” Rachel sneers. “That is so sweet. I always hoped Paxton could find someone who could overlook his social awkwardness and his alcohol and drug abuse. When he tried to kill himself over that girl I figured no one would want him. I’m glad he managed to pull you out of that hick town because he would have never found someone in a town like Glencoe.”

  “Rachel, don’t tell her lies,” I mutter.

  “Sorry darling,” she says to me before turning back to Jessa and shielding her mouth like she’s telling a secret. “Paxton likes to call it an overdose, it makes him feel better.”

  “I can’t imagine what would have driven him to overdose on drugs, it seems like he has such a loving, supportive family. You seem like a really great mother who would have taken the time to raise him right. That must have been hard for you to see him in so much pain,” Jessa says with a combination of hate and sadness in her voice.